NetSuite Automation to Maximize Efficiency

Oracle NetSuite is a powerful ERP that includes some of the top software solutions every business needs. Modules from warehouse management, SuiteCommerce, CRM, and Advanced Financials help companies become more efficient. The key to maximizing efficiency with your NetSuite instance is to harness the automations you can create with the platform.

Here are some tips for areas in your business that you can automate to save your organization time by saving your employees time.

NetSuite Automation Tip 1: Ecommerce SEO

If you have an e-commerce website, meta descriptions are crucial to maintaining high Google rankings. Search engine optimization (SEO) relies on meta descriptions to tell Google the primary focus of the web page. The meta description appears below the page title in Google search results, so it's also crucial to effectively convey to a potential customer what your page is about. For e-commerce, meta descriptions can be automated for product detail pages (PDPs) that display your item information. For companies with thousands or millions of SKUs in NetSuite ERP, ensuring data integrity for this field is crucial.

NetSuite Automation Tip 2: Customer Center Portal

A customer center portal in NetSuite enables your customers to access the information you make available to them. It's not the prettiest-looking portal, but it has plenty of areas that you can customize/automate to make it more effective for your customers.

If your business sells to businesses (B2B) and customers use this portal to place sales orders, you can add a customization that displays items to purchase in a table, allows customers to enter quantities, and includes a 'Place Order' button. Then, you can auto-populate these items and quantities on the sales order. This automation requires approximately 30 hours of development time and can duplicate the ecommerce grid ordering. In comparison to ecommerce licensing fees, this might be an ideal solution.

NetSuite Automation Tip 3: Tax Automation

Maintaining tax tables for all state taxes can be a tedious task, but there are a few preferred software solutions that can make this process easier. In addition to table maintenance, their solutions also provide other tax automations in NetSuite to make your life easier...especially during tax season.

We recommend two solutions that integrate very effectively with NetSuite.

1. Avalara
2. Thomson Reuters OneSource

These are both excellent options, and based on your need, either one will likely do the trick. If you conduct international business, OneSource currently offers a slightly better solution. Otherwise, they have a comparable solution.

NetSuite Automation Tip 4: Marketing 

If you already have NetSuite, it may seem like it can't do any marketing automations, but that is not true. In fact, it probably has the most automation potential out of any other software solution. However, it also requires more technical knowledge to reach the level you may desire. It is likely a good idea to involve your consultant or developer in building out this section.

A developer can enhance Email Templates to serve as the foundation for an effective email marketing campaign. Email marketing is quite effective in NetSuite, as all the necessary data is already stored in the ERP. However, your company will likely outgrow NetSuite's native email marketing features relatively quickly.  Therefore, you may want to consider integrating a more robust email marketing platform, such as Mailchimp, to complement your NetSuite system.

Review workflows to set up marketing automation. When a workflow isn't working for what you want, a NetSuite developer can build a script to make it work. There are essentially no limitations to SuiteScript, where you may hit a couple of dead ends using workflows.

NetSuite Automation Tip 5: Pain Points

For some reason, companies often let their pain points persist for far too long before implementing automation. It often doesn't require much math to determine if a manual task is worth automating using a NetSuite customization. Don't be afraid to customize NetSuite; it is designed to allow for customization. If your NetSuite pages are not loading quickly enough, it's a good idea to revisit the code with your developer to find ways to improve the script performance.

NetSuite Alliance Partner & Commerce Partner

Hopefully, this post provides you with something to work with as you try to understand NetSuite and its capabilities for your business. If you have general questions about NetSuite or more specific questions about setting up dropdown tabs in your NetSuite environment, please don't hesitate to contact the Anchor Group team at any time. Anchor Group is a certified Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner & Commerce Partner and is equipped to handle all kinds of NetSuite and SuiteCommerce projects, large or small!